Regional Fast Rail project
The Regional Fast Rail project was a rail transport project undertaken by the State Government of Victoria, Australia, between 2000 and 2006 aimed at improving rail services on the Victorian regional railway network, specifically to reduce travel times, enhance service frequency and safety.
With delays, the project was finally completed in 2009. Record passenger numbers and a substantial contribution to the growth of regional Victorian economies have both been attributed to the project with several substantial spin-off projects and subsequent calls for further upgrades and investment. The cost of the project to the government was estimated at A$750 million.
History
Background and 1999 state election
At the 1996 Victorian election, a Liberal Party government led by Jeff Kennett was re-elected on a platform of continued rationalisation of the state's public services. This program of service reduction and privatisation, later described as one of the Kennett government's most significant legacies, included breaking up the Public Transport Corporation and selling or franchising nearly all of its assets and operations, as well as cancelling or reducing train services to regional areas. During 1999, the state's V/Line rail freight operations were sold outright to Freight Victoria, a consortium led by American company RailAmerica. At the company's insistence, the government also decided to lease the majority of the intrastate network itself to the winning bidder, on the basis that the control of both track and trains would enable Freight Victoria to implement greater efficiencies. However, open access was mandated for the network under Freight Victoria's control, for other freight operators and passenger services. Later in the year, country passenger train operations under the V/Line brand were franchised to National Express, a British transport multinational, under a 15-year contract which included a commitment by the company to invest in infrastructure upgrades as well as 58 "high speed trains".In the lead up to the 1999 election, it became imperative for the Labor Party under Steve Bracks to focus on country towns most affected by the cuts to services over the previous decade, as the Liberal government appeared to be a strong chance for re-election in the suburbs of Melbourne.
On 8 September, in addition to promising a Melbourne Airport rail link, Bracks announced a new commitment to invest $80 million in the Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Traralgon country rail lines, enabling new private infrastructure manager Freight Victoria to increase speed limits from to and therefore reduce travel times to main regional centres. The following day, the government promised $100,000 in funding to investigate the possibility of upgrading the Ballarat line alone.
By the beginning of October, Bracks had indicated that he expected private rail operators would be heavily involved in the project, and promised to begin discussions by the end of that year should he be elected.
The election of 18 September 1999, resulted in a hung parliament with both major parties attempting to secure a deal with three independent representatives in order to form government. Having secured a deal, the Bracks government was elected on 16 October, shocking political commentators and election analysts, who had expected Kennett to comfortably retain power for a third term.
Planning and pre-construction
In accordance with his pre-election promise, Bracks announced in December 1999 that feasibility studies and community consultation were underway and would be completed by the following April. At the same time, the government's travel time targets began to emerge, with the promise of 60- and 80-minute journeys to Ballarat and Bendigo respectively met with lukewarm support from city councils.In early 2000, Bracks committed the government to a major redevelopment of Spencer Street station, the main Melbourne country rail terminal, to bring it up to modern standards in line with the fast rail project and proposed airport link. Then, in March, the government announced that the findings of the feasibility studies supported commencement of the project, and suggested that the upgrades could be completed within four years.
On 5 September of that year, the government revealed full details of the Regional Fast Rail plan for the first time. Announcing that the government's contribution would be $550 million instead of the originally promised $80 million, Bracks told media that the government had not fully understood the decrepitude of the existing network, and that while the government's payments would cover the costs of upgrading infrastructure, the private sector would fund the purchase of new rollingstock for the improved lines. The announcement also detailed that the maximum speed of the improved services would be, enabling travel times of 45 minutes to Geelong and 90 minutes to Traralgon in addition to the previously mooted targets for Ballarat and Bendigo.
At the start of October, the government's ability to work with the still-new private operators of the transport system was called into question when Freight Australia – a renamed Freight Victoria, lessor of the country rail network infrastructure – threatened to withdraw its cooperation if the government continued to insist that it provide equitable access to other freight operators on the network. The company's argument, that the proposed pricing arrangement did not adequately reimburse FA for capital investment in the network, was supported by academics from Melbourne Business School. As an alternative, FA offered to take on accountability and project management of the RFR program in exchange for alterations to the open access scheme, an arrangement which it argued would minimise the risk to the government and encourage the private sector to invest additional funds in the project. However, the government rejected this approach, pointing out that the term of the rail network lease enabled the state to proceed with upgrade works regardless of FA's willingness to cooperate, and arguing that FA had access to the details of the proposed open access regime at the time it purchased the V/Line Freight business. In response, FA suspended further capital investment in the state's rail network, but ultimately did not rule out cooperating with the fast rail scheme.
By the end of March 2001, the Liberal state opposition had begun to claim that there was little private sector interest in the project, and that the government would be forced to contribute its full cost should it go ahead. Bracks and transport minister Peter Batchelor denied the rumours, saying that formal expressions of interest would be called later in the year. A launch was held in June, where the government hoped to find investment support, but Bracks and Batchelor conceded they would fully fund the project if no additional finance could be found. Meanwhile, the government agreed to assist National Express with its purchase of new trains, as the government had demanded they be built to faster specifications than the original franchise documents envisaged. Later that month, the government suggested that the fibre optic cabling required to upgrade signalling could encourage internet service providers to join the project in order to offer connectivity to towns along the upgraded lines.
A shortlist of consortiums bidding to construct the project was announced in September. The leading companies for the five bids – Alstom, Baulderstone, John Holland, Leighton Contractors and Downer EDI Rail – agreed to attempt to meet the government's target travel times, investigate electrifying the line to Geelong as part of the project, and finalise the requirements for property acquisition and additional costs. A separate tender was let in October for the fibre-optic cabling, with three bidders shortlisted.
Bombardier Transportation was contracted as the builder of the new fast trains in late November. The VLocity trains, with a top speed of 210 km/h, were to be constructed at Bombardier's Dandenong factory at a cost of $410 million, including a 30-year maintenance agreement. Meanwhile, the government suffered sustained criticism of the project following the release of research commissioned by the National Party and carried out by ACIL Consulting, which claimed that the economic benefits of fast rail had been massively overestimated. However, the government denied the report's findings, and the Liberal Party refused to support the Nationals' stark opposition to the project, though it agreed the episode showed the plan had not been sufficiently scrutinised.
Project scope
Because the state government's agencies did not have sufficient resources or experience to successfully procure a major rail project, the Department of Infrastructure chose to offer bidding consortia substantial freedom to submit a scope of works that would meet the government's objectives. In order to do this, the tenders for each of the four routes to be upgraded were offered separately, and civil engineering firms were encouraged to bid in partnership with signalling providers.The state's objectives included improving journey times "to the maximum extent possible on a value-for-money basis", maintaining a suitable standard of safety, achieving sustained patronage growth, minimising cost to the taxpayer and transferring risk to the private sector, and meeting ambitious deadlines for completion. Tendering firms were asked to design their bids to serve two peak services and one counter-peak on each of the Ballarat, Bendigo and Gippsland corridors.
The project had five key components:
- upgrading rail infrastructure: construction works were undertaken to upgrade rail infrastructure to allow trains to travel safely at speeds of up to 160 km/h on the country sections of the corridors
- new fast trains: a total of 29 new VLocity trains were purchased
- installation of fibre optic cable: a new fibre optic cable network was installed as part of the upgraded rail signalling and communications systems
- new timetable: a revised 2006 V/Line timetable was developed, incorporating some faster and several additional train services
- interconnecting bus services: improvements to connecting bus services to the fast rail regional centres.
The VLocity trains began running at increased speeds from December 2005, with regular 160 km/h services beginning on the Geelong, Ballarat, and Bendigo lines on 3 September 2006.
As well as reduced journey times, new timetables also increased the frequency of services, with off-peak trains arriving up to once per hour. Additional trains, with varying lengths to suit demand, were scheduled to operate during the peak, with one service on each line in the morning and evening peaks designated as the "flagship" service, which was scheduled to run at the journey time which had been promised.